Talking Heads Album By Album Thread

"More Songs About Buildings And Food" is an odd album. The band claims this more accurately represents their live sound, and while most of the basics were recorded live, I find Eno's post-production tinkering sometimes muddies up the picture a bit. I don't think it's a bad album, or even mediocre (in fact, it was my favorite for a while when I first became a serious fan of the band), but to me, it doesn't really have the cohesiveness of the debut. The crispness of the debut is sacrificed a bit for a slightly muddy, thin sound that I've never really been able to pin down. Another interesting aspect of this album is that it has a more sinister feel than its predecessor, with songs like "With Our Love," "Warning Sign," "I'm Not In Love" and "Stay Hungry" having dark underpinnings.

I think I agree with His Masters Vice about side one. My favorite here is probably "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls," which is just classic Heads. Gently chugging funk rock with bizarre, analytical lyrics. No one was writing anything like this at that time. Really nice instrumental passages and keyboard work, too. (In fact, there's some really haunting keyboard work throughout the album, including "With Our Love" and "Stay Hungry.") "The Good Thing" is another highlight, with its lovely guitar work and melody and rather stunning choruses. Eno's production works extremely well on "Warning Sign," with its haunting guitar interplay, delayed snare and reverse echoed vocals. (I've also noticed someone in the background saying "what is it?" every time the "I remember" section comes up.) "With Our Love" is a pretty dark song that works well. Great guitar interplay, keyboard work and lyrics. "Thank You For Sending Me An Angel" and "Found A Job" are both good, although I almost think they come off much better live.

Much of side two doesn't really cohere for me. It just seems like it's all over the place, both stylistically and quality-wise. "Stay Hungry" is pretty great, but "Artists Only" and "I'm Not In Love" sort of smack of filler to me. In fact, my biggest qualm with this album is how it ends. "Take Me To The River" is a song I've never been too fond of. It sounds out of place to me, and I also feel it sort of brings the energy on the album to a grinding halt. Same with "The Big Country." I don't normally like to alter albums for my own personal enjoyment, but I've found this album works better if you substitute the alternate version of "Country" found on the expanded remaster, then switch "Take Me To The River" to the final spot. The more minimalist, faster and higher pitched version of "Country" fits in better with the overall sound of the album, and it winds down more naturally with the slow gospel groove of "Take Me To The River." Try it and see what you think.

So there are many good to great songs here, but something about the whole affair just doesn't really sit well with me. Probably one of my lesser favorites from the band. I'd probably give it something like a solid B.

 

I agree with you about this. In fact, I used to just skip "Artists Only" back in the vinyl-only days! Your point about "Take Me To The River" bringing the album to a halt is a good one. It certainly doesn't want to make you listen to another slow song afterwards, and "The Big Country" tends to seem like an anticlimax at that point. I find "The Big Country" to be reminiscent musically of some of the tracks on "Little Creatures" or "True Stories"; stuff like "City of Dreams" or "Road to Nowhere", except that "The Big Country" has a lyrical twist in the corner ("I wouldn't live there if you paid me to") that the other songs lack. Still, it's not the worst track TH used to close an album!

 

As a result of this thread i finally took after more then 25 year my vinyl of 77 out of the closet. And listen to it again.
And it is a great album with the strange minimalistic rhythms and the voice and pronunciations of David Byrne.
Back in the end of the seventies it was ofcourse Psycho Killers why i bought the album. The nervousness of the song was something complettely new and thrilling at that time. The rest of the album was somewhat different, not so newwave punkish as i expected in those days. And that was probably the reason why i forget it.

 

I always liked the quirkier songs on side 2 of the vinyl version of MSAB&F. As a matter of fact, in general, I liked this album better than the debut (where the songs had a certain "sameiness" to them). The second album had more variety, and the rhythm section drives the band a bit harder and faster.

 

I can see your point about the rhythm section.

As for variety, I personally think the minimal production on the first album forces the listener to judge the songs on their own merits. I don't have a problem distinguishing any of the "77" songs from one another because they all sound fundamentally different, in terms of tempo, melody and chord structure.

Some critics actually say MSAB&F is the one that suffers from "sameiness." I think George Starostin called the bulk of the album "The Big Drone."

 

"Found a Job" is my all-time favorite Talking Heads song. Period! I love all three versions that I know of: the album version, the version from Stop Making Sense, and the version from The Name of This Band is.....

Is there any story behind the big-long jam at the end of the song? And does anyone know how to play the two chords they keep going back and forth with?

 

I think I may have read something about the jam. Let me check around.

As for the chords...they are A7 and D7, both barred.

 

More Songs About Buildings and Food was one of my favorite albums of all time for many many years. This band really had quite an impact on me. I was in high school at the time and it was "our" band, my few friends, most around us hadnt a clue the band existed, "Take Me To The River" really didnt have an impact on the radio listening masses, so being a Heads fan in 1978 in our high shool felt like a special club, we coulda been a John Hughes movie...

I saw the band live numerous times during this album as well. These songs had quite the wallop live and I prefer hearing most of them in live incarnations vs. the album at this point. I was lucky enough to have seen the Capitol Theatre show in 1979 that a few of the live tracks from TNOTBITH live record comes from...that was a bus from queens to a train to manhattan, to a bus to new jersey, to get there, an unsavory place and then do the reverse back, getting home way late but we were kids and it was always worth it for the Heads.

Found a Job is one of my all time faves, loving his lyrics and delivery on this one, Artists Only, The Girls Want To Be With The Girls, I'm not in Love, Stay Hungry, all amazing tunes that havent lost their impact over time. Still its a hard album for me to play from front to back now. I prefer all my Heads on random play these days, I like to jumble all their records with all their sounds and these songs work nicely next to latter day Heads songs for me but never all in a row.

Actually, I never just play any single Heads album now, its either ipod on random with all albums, or squeezebox on random, same thing. Sorta like the album cover of this album, just a mix of singular things making up a solid whole for me.

 

Same here!

 

I like this album a lot, it's about on the same level as the debut for me personally.

That being the said, the NEXT two albums are my absolute favorites!

 

Since I was introduced to the band with 77, I was a bit disappointed with MSABAF, at least initially. I didn't really care much for Eno's production. There are songs I love --Thank You For Sending Me An Angel and Big Country, especially---but I still prefer the debut.

 

Great story!

 

Fear of Music

SIDE ONE:
"I Zimbra" (David Byrne, Brian Eno, Hugo Ball) – 3:06
"Mind" – 4:12
"Paper" – 2:36
"Cities" – 4:05
"Life During Wartime" (David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth) – 3:41
"Memories Can't Wait" – 3:30

SIDE TWO:
"Air" – 3:33
"Heaven" (David Byrne, Jerry Harrison) – 4:01
"Animals" – 3:29
"Electric Guitar" – 2:59
"Drugs" – 5:13

All songs by David Byrne except where otherwise indicated.
Produced by Brian Eno and Talking Heads.
Recorded at Chris & Tina's loft in Long Island City; The Hit Factory, Atlantic Studios, RPM Sound Studios, The Record Plant, New York.
Released August 3rd, 1979.

David Byrne – vocals, guitars
Chris Frantz – drums
Jerry Harrison – keyboards, guitars, backing vocals
Tina Weymouth – bass, backing vocals

Brian Eno – backing vocals, treatments
Gene Wilder and Ari – congas on 1 and 5
Robert Fripp – guitar on 1
The Sweetbreathes – backing vocals on 7
Julie Last – backing vocals on 1

Fear of Music was the third album by Talking Heads, released in 1979. It peaked at #21 in the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and singles "Life During Wartime " made #80 on the Pop Singles chart, and "I Zimbra" made #28 on the Club Play Singles chart.

The song "I Zimbra" was adapted from the poem "Gadji beri bimba" by Dadaist poet Hugo Ball. Its polyrhythms presaged the direction the band would take on its next album, Remain in Light.

The original LP sleeve was all-black and embossed with a pattern that resembled the appearance and texture of metal flooring.

In 2005, the album was re-released and remastered by Warner Music Group on their Warner Bros./Sire Records/Rhino Records labels in DualDisc format, with four bonus tracks on the CD side

("Dancing for Money" and alternate versions of "Life During Wartime", "Cities" and "Mind"). The DVD-A side includes both stereo and 5.1 surround high resolution (96 kHz/24bit) mixes, as well as a Dolby Digital 5.1 version of the album and the videos for "Cities" and "I Zimbra".

The alternate "Life During Wartime" is a full-length version with a guitar part by Robert Fripp.

The "Cities" alternate contains verses and musical elements not used in the album version.

The Sweetbreathes are Tina's sisters Laura and Lani. They would also appear on some Tom Tom Club records.

(Most information courtesy of Wikipedia)

 

ON THE WRITING AND RECORDING:

BYRNE: We perform better when we're just playing around anyway. The Record Plant truck came out to Chris and Tina's, and we ran the cables through the window and did the basic tracks in two days--which is pretty fast.

HARRISON: It meant that we had to play well [laughs] on those days, but on the other hand it was a great advantage because we didn't have to get used to the sound of the room--we were already used to it and could interact with it.

BYRNE: Some of the material had a whole song structure--here's the verse section, the chorus section, middle eight, tag at the end--no words, but everybody knew where to play. On other tunes we had nothing written--we would just play a groove or jam, and when it clicked we'd record that for a while. Then we'd have a couple of riffs that fit the same groove and we'd start to record those over everything we already had.

HARRISON; A couple of songs started in rehearsal, or with a tape somebody made or with something that happened in a sound check that corresponded to something somebody else had worked on.

BYRNE: I wanted to try working different ways on the songs. I wanted to start with lyrics on one and come up with the music, and then have a riff and improvise words on another. I wouldn't want to get into a rut or formula writing songs. I ended up making lists of possible subjects, like "Write a song from this point of view." I worried because on some of them, I'd put myself in the position of writing all the music first. I was pleased with the way it worked out, because I felt like putting myself in a dangerous position. I'd worked that way before, but this was the first time I really formalized the method. This time I sat down and said, "We'll do the whole thing this way."

ON THE TITLE:

HARRISON: We thought of the title Fear of Music while we were making More Songs About Buildings and Food. David was talking about a book he had been reading called Music and the Brain. There is a particular type of epilepsy that is set off by music. For some people it's only classical music, or only a particular type of music. I said, "Boy, that would be a great name for an album." We all laughed and said it would be great. And it just sort of stuck.

ON THE COVER:

BYRNE: The cover was mainly Jerry's idea. He originally wanted to use a different material--some sort of plastics--but that was too expensive. I designed the typeface and where it should go and how big it should be, and the layout. It was rubber flooring, but it's the same pattern used on metal. Jerry found it very attractive; he thought it was a real nice pattern.

ON "I ZIMBRA":

BYRNE: This was inspired by an African record called 17 Mabone. It has guitars and fiddles and saxophones, completely unlike some of the African music that's [better] known, like Fela and Sunny Adé. It's almost like British reels or something like that. So we took it as a point of departure. My original idea was that I would collect as many riffs as possible, using the same rhythm, and weed out the least interesting ones. There were seven or eight different sections in the song; we rehearsed going from one section to the other, then narrowed them down to the sections in the song. We talked about having percussion players come in--conga players or something. Brian and I were walking in Washington Square Park one time and saw two guys who were real good; they came in and did their thing over the song. Then Fripp added his bit. He likes to come in with no one around and throw out his ideas onto tape, and you pick the one you like. Brian suggested the melody after all the instruments and the arrangement had been recorded. Then it was time to put words to it. I tried three or four times, but the final idea was Brian's. We had agreed it should be a chant, something simple being repeated. I tried some words, but they just went on and on. Jerry tried some words, but they seemed too literal. The words came from a phonetic poem, nonsense syllables from a Dada sound poem by Hugo Ball. Eno suggested it; the syllables seemed to fit, so there was no reason not to use it.

HARRISON: This song almost didn't make it on the album. We were about to leave for Australia and New Zealand, and were listening back to the finished mixes. I asked if we could hear the rough of "I Zimbra." It sounded so great that we all knew it had to be finished no matter what changes had to be made.

ON "MIND":

BYRNE: there are some synthesizer swells and little pings in "Mind" that I think are real sensuous. To me that's a little deeper than rubbing your groin.

ON "PAPER":

BYRNE: The phrase "Hold on to that paper" is used in such a way that paper seems like a substitute for a person or something very important and meaningful. Put like that, it doesn't make any sense at all. So I just proceeded from there.

WEYMOUTH: I didn't like "Paper" for a long time--the words weren't even written yet, but I didn't like David's guitar riff. Then everybody's playing got so much tighter that suddenly it became a song. I realized it was working, and I liked it.

ON "LIFE DURING WARTIME":

BYRNE: The line "This ain't no disco" sure stuck! Remember when they would build bonfires of Donna Summer records? Well, we liked some disco music! It's called "dance music" now. Some of it was radical, camp, silly, transcendent and disposable. So it was funny that we were sometimes seen as the flag bearers of the anti-disco movement.

HARRISON: "Life During Wartime" started in Detroit. David had a phrase on the guitar, and during a sound check he said, "try playing something with this." I started playing something, and then we stopped, and I started playing something that was a little different but in the same sort of feel. Then he thought of a phrase that went with that, and we said, "hey, someone put on a cassette and record this." We didn't think about it for six months. Then when we got down to working on the record, we dug up this tape. We weren't exactly jamming, we were sort of playing music with no particular predefined course. Tina had thought of a bass part, and David and I both immediately jumped into the first part of what we had developed in Detroit. So the music sort of developed by itself. At that time, we called it our New Orleans song; we thought it sounded like New Orleans music. And then the lyrics just sort of came along, just from playing the song.

BYRNE: I wanted to give the impression that it could just go on and on with endless description of that scene. There were more words [on the lyric sheet], so it goes on for a while after that. It was to give the idea that the song wasn't a story with a beginning and an end--just a description. It's pretty direct. It's about people missing their nightclubbing because they have to be involved in guerrilla warfare. [Laughs]

ON "MEMORIES CAN'T WAIT":

HARRISON: One of the few times in early T. Heads where I got to play with feedback.

ON "AIR":

BYRNE: "Air" I find very touching. It's not a joke. I tried to write a song which would be touching in the same way that some of the Threpenny Opera songs are, with a very melancholy melody. To me, it's a very sad love song, but the words don't mention that at all. It's just that the person feels so bad that even air feels painful.

ON "HEAVEN":

BYRNE: I started "Heaven" trying to sound like Neil Young. I was listening to Zuma and Tonight's the Night...some great songs....I wanted to present the idea that instead of bliss or happiness, the standard for beauty could be something mundane that happens over and over again--something which is pleasurable enough, but certainly not exciting. Normal things become perfect. It's almost as if heaven could be anything.

WEYMOUTH: "Heaven" was a song David wanted to be a crooner on, like Frank Sinatra; he wanted to have a song where he could really sing. He had guitar chords and a melody, but there was something wrong with the way it went from verse to chorus. Jerry transcribed the same melody into another key, and then it followed. Because it was essentially a country song, it was automatic what Chris and I would play.

BYRNE: I think some of the stuff we do is pretty weird. It's very nice we can get on the radio, because we've never done anything wirh the radio in mind. The one song that I thought might be melodic enough and acessible enough for radio play was "Heaven." So I specifically withdrew embellishments so the arrangement wouldn't work that way.

FRANTZ: Sometimes rock stars get over-stimulated and the idea of a place where nothing ever happens sounds pretty appealing.

ON "ANIMALS":

HARRISON: That's one song you either like or don't like; people have strong attachments to their pets.

BYRNE: I don't necessarily like the ideas in "Animals," but as I was writing I thought, This is a reasonable point of view, that people shouldn't look at animals as...cuddly sweet things who never have any trouble with their sex lives and live in a perpetual state of innocence and bliss, or that we should mimic animal behavior. I could have written the same thing about primitive people. To some extent, people see them as noble savages living in harmony with their surroundings and with each other, in an ideal society, with everything balancing out. And it's about time somebody debunked that one. I thought it would be nice to present a contrary idea: animals as obstinate beings with lots of problems of their own, and we shouldn't pay any attention to them.

HARRISON: The music is in some tricky meters. We have trouble playing and singing at the same time.

ON "ELECTRIC GUITAR":

BYRNE: The words came first. I used the technique of sing-speak-squeaking the words into a tape recorder in a sort of retarded voice. I wanted the guitar part to be real static in the verses. I just played the chords like "bomp-bomp-bomp." Then I thought the bass should do all the work, fly around it, play counterpoint and funny little melodies--trying to throw the thing off rhythm. Jerry and I worked it out, then Tina worked out the other part, the chorus.

WEYMOUTH: "Electric Guitar" was originally just words typed on paper. David showed me all the different words he had; they weren't finished and didn't have any meaning, because they were bits and pieces without any music or context. I said, "Go ahead with this one because it's so weird"--instead of going with something that's obviously well-written and acceptable. Then he sang it like he was retarded....We told him to resing it because it sounded too retarded; you couldn't understand the lyrics. It was the same thing in "Psycho Killer": if he'd sung it like a psycho killer, it wouldn't have been believable. Eno put an effect on my bass so it sounded like a tuba, and I was really pleased with that. We all agree that there are certain things you can do that sound real nifty the first time but then become overbearing. In the original of "Electric Guitar," after the last chord died, it expanded into a big sound of thunder, rain, and London car horns--city sounds. Most people hearing it, if they lived in a city, would just think it was part of their own environment--they wouldn't think it was on the record. But we decided to take it out anyway, even though it was subtle, because people would hear it every single time and get tired of it.

ON "DRUGS":

BYRNE: Originally, it was called "Electricity." I suggested stripping it down, so we started doing it together and taking more and more out. It ended up being changed completely....That was a funny vocal. I tried a number of approaches, like putting emphasis on the wrong syllables. I tried singing it real softly, and I tried singing in an exclamatory style. I got frustrated; neither of those seemed to work. I ended up doing a lot of exercises so I would sing it out of breath. Then I started jogging while singing; that worked out. It's this out-of-breath style; you hear a little bit of huffing and puffing.

 

My least favorite of their first four. It's still great, though. It's sort of a transitional album for them. Some excellent ideas running through Eno and the Heads for this one, that would reach their culmination and peak on the next one.

 

This is probably my most favorite single Heads album at this point in time, probably because of the first listen.

the day the album came out I had tix to see them headline in central park at the dr. pepper concert series...lets just say that prior to getting on the subway I, as a tender 17 year old imbibed on a very unpronouncable 3 word substance also known as the last song on this album. It was designed to send you somewhere...

so on the subway, underground all is well, we're psyched to see them, etc, smiling a lot, in that place...we get to central park go upground and it was like a monsoon had swept through manhattan, fifth ave. was a flood of water, the show is canceled...

what do to now that we're experiencing the last track on this album but didnt know that song title was so apt, we'd known it as Electricity..."i'm charged up, its pretty intense"....

so my friends and i shot over to King Karol and bought Fear of Music and went home and listened to it and lemme tell you...being on "that last song title" and dropping the needle on I zimbra and songs like Mind, and Memory Cant Wait and Air and ending with Drugs, well the chemicals, company and music left an unforgettable and indelible impression on my young MIIIINNNNDDDD.

the show was great the next day, though we werent like the last song on this album on this day.

the show was great but the best show i saw in this period was advertised as "Fear of Music Live"...and we figured it was the Heads, at Irving Plaza, now the Fillmore and that was the last time we got to see them in such a small room as a quartet....man I loved this album and period of the band as a quartet with bigger things about to come to fruition.

 

That's interesting. I've always liked the transition into the chorus on "Heaven", but it doesn't look like much on paper. The verse is in D major and for the chorus the chords are:

Bm Am C G

Which doesn't look that exciting - but the change from Bm to Am just sounds awesome, especially with that melody. I didn't know that Jerry had changed the melody from what David had originally written!

This isn't my favourite TH album, but I love "Mind". "Heaven" is also a good song - I'd heard the story about it being influenced by Neil Young before, which I never would picked but I can certainly imagine Neil singing it.

 

the three eno albums are their career high point, which seems to happen very often to artists that eno gets involved with (bowie, u2). it was pretty obvious from the first seconds of "thank you for sending me an angel" that something had radically changed between the first and 2nd albums. there was a whole added dimension of sound textures that hadn't been there before.

"more songs..." is my favorite talking heads album, i missed the discussion of this record, but i have to second any mention of tina weymouth's great bass lines- nothing too complicated or hard to play just simple and perfect.

"thank you", "found a job", "warning sign", "the girls..." , "big country" are all favorites. probably less second rate tracks on this one than on any of their others. it sunds like they were having fun, even the songs are funny.

fear of music seems to be where the balance totally tips from melodic songcraft into jamming, where lyrics are stretched somewhat unmelodically or even spoken over jammed / processed backing tracks. this method reached it's peak on the next album. it works if the backings are interesting enough to carry the whole song. on fear of music and remain in light they usually are.

favorite tracks are "mind", "paper", "air", "animals", and "electric guitar". i've always found "life during wartime" to be excruciatingly boring, so of course that would be their biggest or 2nd biggest hit, i guess because of the stupid "disco sucks" crap that was going around at the time.

it's a very dark album... paranoid feeling. fear music (without the of).

 

Fear of Music was a bit jarring initially after the first two albums. Some of the songs work better than others for me: "I Zimbra", "Mind", "Air", "Life During Wartime" and "Drugs" being the ones I particularly liked. I thought the album was a big step forward, and I was curious where they would go next.

 

I also witnessed Fear of Music the first time under the influence.
It was being premeired on the radio that night, it left quite an impresssion. My favorite Heads LP. Love the live rythym of the quartet before the band expanded.

 

FoM is a great one, one of my favs, although I prefer the live versions of a lot of these songs.

 

LOVE this album.

A huge leap forward from the first two albums IMO...A CLASSIC.

 

If I was forced to pick a favorite, Fear of Music would be it. "Mind", "Memories Can't Wait", "Air" and "Heaven" are essential Talking Heads songs and most of the others are not far behind. The only sore spot is "Life During Wartime" which is overexposed and unexceptional imo.

"Memories Can't Wait" is excellent in the main body of the song but that ending section just knocks me out every time.